Jennifer Granick fights for civil liberties in an age of massive surveillance and powerful digital technology. As the new surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, she litigates, speaks, and writes about privacy, security, technology, and constitutional rights. Granick is the author of the bookAmerican Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What To Do About It, published by Cambridge Press and winner of the 2016 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.

Granick spent much of her career helping create Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. From 2001 to 2007, she was Executive Director of CIS and founded the Cyberlaw Clinic, where she supervised students in working on some of the most important cyberlaw cases that took place during her tenure. For example, she was the primary crafter of a 2006 exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allows mobile telephone owners to legally circumvent the firmware locking their device to a single carrier. From 2012 to 2017, Granick was Civil Liberties Director specializing in and teaching surveillance law, cybersecurity, encryption policy, and the Fourth Amendment. In that capacity, she has published widely on U.S. government surveillance practices, and helped educate judges and congressional staffers on these issues. Granick also served as the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation from 2007-2010. Earlier in her career, Granick spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California.

Granick’s work is well-known in privacy and security circles. Her keynote, "Lifecycle of a Revolution" for the 2015 Black Hat USA security conference electrified and depressed the audience in equal measure. In March of 2016, she received Duo Security’s Women in Security Academic Award for her expertise in the field as well as her direction and guidance for young women in the security industry. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore) has called Granick an "NBA all-star of surveillance law.”

""This bill… is clearly a ‘backdoor to a backdoor’ to encryption,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society.

“Experts agree that backdoors could be exploited by bad actors and that no backdoor could guarantee only law-abiding officials have access,” said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project."

"Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the U.S. doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a China-style enforcement of stay-at-home policies, because the information available is disaggregated and mostly in the hands of private companies, not the government. “We’re going to have to accept, as with any law in our society, a little bit of noncompliance,” Granick said."Read more about Virus Hands World Leaders Sweeping Powers They May Never Give Up

"“Basically, anything that a provider has that it can decode, law enforcement is getting it,” Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel for the ACLU’s speech, privacy, and technology project, told Recode.

“The issue with biometrics is, is it testimonial?” Granick said. “The courts have not entirely decided that, but there have been a couple courts recently that said biometrics is basically the modern technological equivalent of your passcode.”"

"“The government’s demand is dangerous and unconstitutional, and would weaken the security of millions of iPhones,” said ACLU Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel Jennifer Granick. “Strong encryption enables religious minorities facing genocide, like the Uyghurs in China, and journalists investigating powerful drug cartels in Mexico, to communicate safely with each other, knowledgeable sources, and the outside world.”"Read more about Trump urges Apple to unlock Pensacola gunman’s iPhones

"“The sanctions law doesn’t prohibit and couldn’t prohibit people from posting things in favor of or against a particular sanctioned person or entity,” Jennifer Granick, a surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Hill.

Granick said the controversy over Instagram raised troubling First Amendment concerns that would not go away quickly.